The Profile of Amino Acids in Sea Horse ((Hippocampus sp)

Abstract

Seahorse (Hippocampus sp.) is a marine fisheries commodity that has high economic and nutritional values. The aims of study were to determine the proximate composition and the profile of the amino acids content in seahorses. The method used refers to the AOAC (Association of Official Analytical Chemistry) for proximate analysis and a GC-MS (Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectroscopy) for the amino acid analysis. This research was done in March 2021. The sea horses were carried out from Simeulue waters, Simeulue district, Aceh Province, Indonesia. Samples were divided into 2 sizes, small size (3.00-5.00 cm) and large size ((5.01-10.00 cm). The analysis was done at laboratorium of Syiah Kuala University. The results of the study was found that the proximate content of the seahorse was water content (6.29%), ash content (25.43%), fat content (0.57%), protein content (39.32%) and carbohydrates ( 28.48%). The amino acid composition of large seahorses and small seahorses consists of four types of essential amino acids, namely leucine, isoleucine, histidine and valine, and six types of non-essential amino acids, namely alanine, glycine, aspartic acid, asparagine, arginine and serine.